Joan Moran believes there is a certain peace when the palms are up, the back is straight and the heart is open.
Moran’s students, all with different levels of yoga experience, sat barefoot on colored yoga mats that covered the roof of Boelter Hall at noon on Tuesday. Her voice filled the air as her students breathed in and out in one motion.
“Keep smiling guys, it’s not that grim today,” said Moran, a UCLA yoga instructor, with a broad grin.
Moran has taught yoga to faculty, staff and students all over campus through the Fit Zone program and the John Wooden Center. At the age of 70, she’s the oldest yoga teacher at UCLA.
“I paused at 70. Took in a deep breath and surrendered to the moment,” Moran said. “I don’t feel my age so the chronology wasn’t so important.”
(Tamaryn Kong/Daily Bruin)
Moran said she has been teaching for almost 11 years and, with the energy of a 19-year-old, she sees no reason to stop.
Soft music flowed in between the mats as arms were lifted and joints and muscles were slowly stretched on Tuesday.
Moran’s students said they come to her class to practice yoga, to improve their health and to focus on themselves.
Elsie Walton, a staff member at the UCLA International Institute, said she has been taking Moran’s yoga classes for seven years.
“She’s extraordinarily clear about what she wants, and she’s always energetic,” Walton said. “Practicing yoga has taught me to approach life in a much easier, much more forgiving way. It saves my life and keeps me going.”
Before she started teaching yoga, Moran was a theater instructor, actress, producer and screenwriter. Now, she works as a motivational speaker and continues to write.
In 1980, Moran created her own theater company in Nevada because she felt there was sexual discrimination at the university theater department she was working in. She said she thought the theater refused to let her become a director because she was the only woman in the department, so she eventually left to start her own company.
Moran said she didn’t have yoga to deal with the harder times in her life, unlike many of her fellow “yogis.” She said yoga classes weren’t common, but she had meditation, which ultimately led to her love affair with yoga.
Several years after creating her own company, she decided to leave it, and Las Vegas, behind for a fresh start in Los Angeles. At the time, she was a single mother with two young boys.
“My outside struggles were helped by my yoga practice,” Moran said. “Meditation and yoga practice showed me who I am and helped define my path as a teacher.”
By fusing her lifelong passion for teaching with her new love for yoga, Moran said she is now moving into an age of dissociation with external things.
“In your early years, you practice being somebody. But the older you grow, you’re in the practice of being nobody,” Moran said. “I’m not defined by my job, I’m not defined by my thoughts. I’m just me. It’s very liberating.”
At the age of 50, Moran noticed yoga classes being offered at her local gym in Marina del Rey and decided to join one with her son and daughter-in-law out of curiosity.
That curiosity quickly transformed into passion and inspired her to keep up with the classes for the next nine years. She eventually decided to take yoga teacher-training courses at Maha Yoga in Los Angeles.
“Yoga is a moving meditation,” Moran said. “Meaning that your focus is inside, you’re not thinking.”
Elisa Terry, the FITWELL Services Program director, hired Moran when she applied to be a yoga instructor at UCLA.
“(Moran) has been a wonderful example for students and faculty here on how to age healthfully and gracefully and how to stay active,” Terry said. “Even though she is one of the oldest instructors, she is one of the youngest at heart.”
Terry added that Moran’s classes are always filled.
On Tuesday, Karissa Grasty, a director of development in the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science’s Office of External Affairs, said her day was going terribly until the class.
“I love her great energy and humor. She’s also an inspiration and the oldest yoga teacher I’ve ever had,” Grasty said. “I even got the dean of engineering to join me.”
Moran said she thinks meditation can be performed by listening to the ambient sounds in the environment, such as the background chatter of people in the street, or repeating a mantra over and over again.
“There are people, places and things that drain us,” Moran said. “Meditation helped me become less reactive, less resistant.”
She said she aims to motivate and strengthen the mind-body connection in her students, encouraging them to not only be present during class but in their daily life as well.
“At the end of the day, yoga gives me a tremendous amount of self-worth, balance, mindfulness, awareness,” Moran said. “I’m a result of the strength and discipline inside of me.”